Followers

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Let's face it: the Sooners really, really should have trounced the Cougars in the big game last weekend. I mean, this is the Sooners we're talking about. The Sooners live, breathe, and die football. They have little bitty footballs flowing through their veins. I'm an OU alum myself, and even though I was never interested in football as a sport, I couldn't help but get excited about it when I lived on campus. It was just something in the air. (Or maybe it came from living across the street from the stadium.)

But OU has been a consistently strong team and has brought home several national championships. BYU won the national championship once, in a fluke season when no one could figure out a good reason not to give it to them. (Yes, I said that! Boomer Sooner!)

This situation, in which the Sooners really SHOULD HAVE won, sets the scene for an interesting tale from Eagle Mountain, Utah. Much of Utah, of course, is Cougar country. But Alen Howard, a teacher at Rockwell Charter School in Eagle Mountain, is a graduate of OU and a true Sooners fan. (I know this because he is also one of my many awesome brothers-in-law.) Knowing the sport and the teams like he does, his prediction of an OU win didn't seem unreasonable to, well, anyone. (At least, to anyone who wasn't a Cougar.) And before the game, he made a wager with his class that if BYU won, he'd eat a cricket.

Guess who had to eat a cricket.

You have to agree, Mr. Howard did keep his word to his class. Of course, I'm sure his kids have just loved the whole thing, and they all think he's really cool because he ate a cricket in class. And I'm sure they love having the video up on YouTube to show everyone.

But twenty years from now, they won't remember specific lectures their teacher gave, or most of the information he tested them over. They may not even remember their teacher's face (except from re-watching the YouTube video). But they'll remember that he ate a bug in class. And they'll remember that he kept his promise to them.